The Montessori School of Englewood—a charter school that offers free education to children from some of Chicago’s most at-risk communities—is working to raise $10,000 through an initiative called Books and Blooms.
Why Are Black Families Leaving Chicago? Maybe They Can’t Afford to Wait for Better Schools.
As a Black woman who grew up here, I’ve never needed data to prove these injustices exist—I live, see and fight against them every single day. But numbers don’t lie and this report shows the reality.
We Hurt, We Struggle, Some Die, And We Just Keep Going.
When our City Council votes to pass a crummy budget, they force crap down our throats in the same way they tell us to eat the crap they serve in our city’s school lunchrooms. But we get used to the crappy food, the same way we get used to the crappy budget proposals.
Parents Don’t Appreciate a “Vaccination Awareness Day” That Doesn’t Really Help Get Kids Vaccinated
The canceled classes on Friday, November 12 feels like another instance where CPS and the City of Chicago have passed the buck, shifting the burden of planning and forethought from an institutional responsibility to individual parents and families.
We Don’t Give a Damn About Equity Initiatives Without Intentional Investment in Our Kids
It’s been a year since this piece was written and since CPS chief education officer (then chief equity officer) Maurice Swinney committed to developing the CPS Black student achievement task force. In that year, there’s been significant leadership transition, with Pedro Martinez stepping in as CEO, and it’s recently been announced that Patti Salzmann will replace Swinney as chief education officer.
Chicago Public Schools student reflects on the death and life changes of the pandemic and finds hope
Fast forward to the beginning of 2020, a year we all intended to be great; instead, it turned out to be the worst year we could ever imagine. On every news channel, the anchors would talk about the outbreak of Covid-19, and how rapidly it was spreading. The bold red letters “a virus,” “a disease,” or sometimes even a “killer machine” at the bottom of the TV screen clearly emphasized how bad it had gotten over time.
The Role of the Media in Education Reporting – from the Eight Black Hands podcast
Our friends at Eight Black Hands podcast takes a serious look at education in the U.S. and how it serves (or doesn’t) the 8 million Black students in the system. Their latest episode takes a deep dive into the role that the media plays in keeping the public informed (or not) about education. Who is centered in the stories the…
User Experience Problems Plague GoCPS, Too
Last Spring, CPS announced that they were making some big changes to the competitive admissions process for selective enrollment high schools, elementary schools and academic centers. Chief among those changes was the decision to no longer use the NWEA MAP test scores as a factor in the applications for those schools. In CPS schools, all students will sit for the…